If I'd have seen that man flash his smile beforehand, I never would have
gotten into a poker game with him.  Poker face?  Heh!  He cleaned us all
out.  In his worn out old clothes, dusty from the trail, with his big
callused hands, and that dull empty face.  I thought him a rube at first.
But he handled the cards deftly when he dealt, flicking them down and
snapping them over, so they arrived in front of you with sudden pops
of lightning, his great heavy hands darting about like sparrows while the
rest of him sat immobile.  Not a rube.  A man who had handled cards all his
life.  I tried to engage him in a bit of conversation, feel him out, but
he doesn't answer.  Well, some of those cattlemen, out on the range all their
lives, they loose the idea of talking.  But that face.  Like carved out of a
block of wood it was.  Doesn't blink, eyes don't move, mouth a hard grim
line, not a living face at all.  Is he bluffing?  It drove me bats to look
at him.  Turning his whole head when he wanted to look a different direction,
but never shifting his eyes.  It got to me.  It got to all of us.  It was
that that let him win, not his playing, which, in spite of the nimble hands,
wasn't especially good.

Afterwards, he's scooping the last of our money up still without an
expression, and Elvira comes around.  Where there's easy money, always
easy Elvira.  How you doing Mister?  Wanna come and sit with me?

The man, he gimbles round his head and aims his dead blank mug at her.
She gulps, takes a step back.  He pulls out of his pocket a deck of cards,
but a deck of cards of a different kind.  Instead of kings and aces, I can
see the cards have pictures of bits of faces on them.  Snearing mouths,
laughing mouths, staring eyes.  He flips one card out of the deck and
pops it up in front of his mouth.  A big smile.

Elvira laughs, and takes his hand.  They walk off together toward the bar.
He turns back at us a minute, showing us again his hard stone face.  Pops
a card in front of one eye.  Closed eye.  Snaps it away again.  A wink.
As he turned back to Elvira, he popped another card in front of his mouth.
I couldn't see it, but I bet I know what it was.  Laughing mouth.

9 responses total.

Omigosh -- an off-line use for emoticons!  (Yet again, life imitates
art.)

I think I'm going to call Mr. Kevorkian.

Weird.  Clean it up and send it to a magazine!

Its face don't wash.

LOVE IT!

been meaning to ask:
what's white and black and has trouble going through a revolving door
how do you make a dead baby float?
whats the difference between a truckload of dead babies and a truckload of
bowling balls? ...live babies and bowling balls? so there.

How do you make a dead baby float?
Fill your cup with root beer, and add the dead baby!

xactly!
what about the other three?

Um.

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